Academic Commons

An Investigation of the Note-taking Skills of Adolescents with and without Attention Deficit Hyperacivity Disorder (ADHD): An Extension of Previous Research

Note-taking is an effective and prevalent study strategy that has been widely examined in post-secondary settings. However, little is known about the underlying cognitive variables associated with note-taking. The current study set out to investigate the note-taking skills of high school students with and without Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), in order to extend previous studies on lecture note-taking (Peverly, Garner, & Vekaria, 2011; Peverly et al., 2007; Peverly et al, 2010) to this younger population and disability group. It additionally set out to investigate the utility of providing an outline as an intervention to improve the note-quality of these populations. Participants included 40 high school students with ADHD and 40 high school students without ADHD. Participants took notes on a videotaped lecture, and half were provided with an outline on which to take their notes. One week later, participants reviewed their notes and took a multiple choice test. The independent variables included ADHD status, outline status (yes/no), attention, transcription fluency, verbal working memory, and listening comprehension. The dependent variables were quality of notes and test performance. All measures were group administered. Results of this investigation indicated that ADHD status, attention, transcription speed, and listening comprehension all emerged as significant predictors of note-taking skill. Note-quality and listening comprehension were the only predictors of test performance. Students with ADHD produced lower quality notes when compared to non-ADHD peers. They additionally obtained lower scores on a multiple choice test as well a measure of listening comprehension, but did not significantly differ in terms of attention, verbal working memory, or transcription speed. The provision of an outline did not significantly impact the note quality of students with or without ADHD in the current study. Future research aimed at replicating these findings and expanding the results to include wider samples with more rigorously confirmed diagnoses is recommended.